Ken Silverstein
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When CenterPoint Energy invested in energy efficiency, it chose a technology with a standard communication feature to allow its meters to talk with any programmable household device. CenterPoint is working with the Zigbee Alliance and other stakeholders to create the standard for wireless communication between utility companies and common household features.

Energy efficiency is becoming big business. In fact, some state regulators and their respective utilities are working together to empower customers to get them to become more energy aware. Demand response is among the leading methods -- a technology that allows utilities to signal customers to adjust their energy use during the peak energy time periods. The technologies to do so, however, vary from vendor to vendor.

The Zigbee Alliance and its supporters espouse open standards so that all electric and gas meters can communicate with many products used in homes. So, utilities could wirelessly transmit a signal to programmable thermostats and high-use appliances such as water heaters or pool pumps. Beside CenterPoint, Sempra Energy, Southern California Edison and TXU are among those that are pushing for common protocols.

"The ZigBee home area network is installed in our Technology Center to demonstrate that products from multiple vendors can work in unison," says Tom Standish, group president of regulated operations for CenterPoint Energy, which just implemented the technology. "Our Technology Center allows us a chance to see how an open standards home area network can be combined with our innovative intelligent grid technology."

Indeed, the whole premise behind intelligent grids is that they would be self-healing and would push rate information to consumers to permit them to can be more informed. The initial markets for Zigbee's tools include energy management and efficiency, home automation, building automation and industrial automation. According to Bob Heile, chairman of the Zigbee Alliance in Boston, most utilities do not have smart meters but most are considering whether to invest in them.

If the industry had an open protocol, he says that more utilities would invest in energy efficiency technologies. In other words, utilities need to be able to seamlessly connect to any household device -- one of customers' choosing. Right now, utilities and vendors use a hodge-podge of technologies, each of which may only be operational within the context of an individual utility's network. That works. But, if utilities decide to upgrade, they may have to invest in a new underlying architecture.

Public Endorsements

At least one public utility commission says that it would be in the best interest of promoting energy efficiency if there were just one common protocol. The Texas PUC says that a single standard to communicate with devices in a home area network is advisable and suggests non-proprietary ones such as Zigbee or Home-Plug.

"If you talk to utilities, they would love to have a common standard," says Brent Hodges, vice president of business development for Zigbee. "Now, the question becomes what then is the best technology to use in the long run."

The move to standardized protocols to allow easy two-way communications would be a positive step. But, it would certainly not be an easy one. While various in-home industry standards exist now, no specific one has been universally accepted by the utility industry. That's why the leading utilities in California and Texas are championing Zigbee.

Will it work? The jury is still out but some industry skeptics say that at this point it is unrealistic. The Zigbee Alliance is five-years old and will assuredly go through additional changes as more and more utilities adopt energy efficiency programs. That means that any standard created today will be outdated as the industry matures. By implication, the standard then becomes a moving target, making it impossible for companies building Zigbee-friendly devices today and in the future to be truly interoperable.

Meantime, questions persist about whether wireless technologies will continue to be a reliable communications medium from the meter to devices inside homes. Many don't expect wireless to work everywhere, which means that multiple technologies and protocols will be required well into the future.

"In the end, the utility industry will probably continue to use a variety of technologies," says one industry expert. "This shouldn't be a problem. The important factor is that utilities are uniform across their internal deployments and not that there is a single technological standard across the entire industry."

The Zigbee Alliance says that its movement is building critical mass. It not only has enlisted the endorsement of investor-owned utilities in California and in Texas but it has also won the support of original equipment manufacturers, semiconductor makers and technology providers from around the world. If Zigbee appears to have an aura of inevitability, then the trend would only get bigger.

It's off to a notably start. Goteborg Energi AB in Sweden is the world's first energy company to use a common protocol like Zigbee for metering services to cover an entire city. Similarly, Reliant Energy is now also testing Zigbee's tools to curb high electricity usage across Texas by increasing thermostat settings a few degrees or cycling off air conditioning systems for short periods of time.

The overriding point is that private enterprise is placing its bets on the future of energy conservation and it is all being done with the blessing of state and federal regulators. Common protocols may be an ideal. But, at least there's a movement afoot to enlighten and ultimately empower consumers to make wise energy decisions. Manufacturers and other entrepreneurs will vie for their fair share. In the end, though, the market will sort out which technologies are applied.


 

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